Tag Archives: Richard Dawkins

Is Richard Dawkins (still) a “real” scientist?

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Is Richard Dawkins a scientist? According to Edward O. Wilson, in a recent interview with The Guardian, Dawkins is not a scientist. Wilson claims:

“Would you like to talk about Dawkins?” he continues – and when I [i.e. the author of the article, Susanna Rustin] say yes, he laughs. “I hesitate to do this because he’s such a popular guy, but Dawkins is not a scientist. He’s a writer on science and he hasn’t participated in research directly or published in peer-reviewed journals for a long time. In other words, there is no Wilson-versus-Dawkins controversy: it’s Wilson versus … well, I could give you a goodly list of other scientists doing peer-reviewed research.”

Anthropologist Barbara King responded via Twitter as follows:

“Dawkins is not a scientist”: EO Wilson in the Guardian. (OK, I have differences w/ Dawkins, but that’s plain wrong…)

I thus asked her why she thinks that Wilson is wrong. Last year I spoke to an atheist and biologist from Groningen University, who claimed exactly the same thing as Wilson. He also responded (this is my paraphrase of verbal communication) that Dawkins destroyed his academic credentials with his irrational rantings against religion. I have heard similar claims from scientists and biologists from my own Radboud University.

It seems there are a lot of scientists who think that as soon as Dawkins became the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science in 1995 (a position he held until 2008 according to Wikipedia), he renounced his scientific career.

Barbara King responded to my question as follows:

Excellent question – I’m thinking this through, hope to blog soon on it.

It really is an interesting discussion. What makes someone a “real” scientist? And can you stop being a “real” scientist? What do you think?

Williams, Dawkins, and Kenny on the nature of human beings and their ultimate origins, 23/02/2012

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On 23 February, there will be an interesting debate between Rowan Williams (the Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Dawkins and Anthony Kenny on the issue of “The Nature of Human Beings and the Question of their Ultimate Origin”.

Time and venue: THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE, OXFORD, THURSDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2012, 4.00-5.30PM (UK time).

Because of the huge amount of interest, it will also be broadcasted live on the internet.

For more information, go here: http://originsofnature.com/home.html.

Dawkins, jewelry, atheism, symbolism

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Have you ever looked at the website of the Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net, and then I mean especially the store section: http://store.richarddawkins.net/? I recently noticed that “they” (I don’t presume Dawkins is selling stuff in person) sell jewelry. In itself there’s of course nothing wrong with that. But notice that The Richard Dawkins store sells jewelry in the form of DNA-strands, and Darwin’s sketch of the tree of life. These apparently are adopted as the symbols of the atheism that Dawkins is preaching. It’s interesting to see how science and symbolism here go hand in hand. But what is also interesting, is particular dynamics that is at work here. Creationism and Intelligent Design are taking evolutionary theory as a symbol for evil. Evolutionary theory symbolizes everything that in the eyes of creationists and ID-adherents is morally wrong in our contemporary society. Creationists and ID-people consider especially Darwin’s tree of life, representing common ancestry, a deeply problematic symbol. And now here you have Richard Dawkins who does exactly that: Dawkins takes DNA and Darwin’s idea of the tree of life, and turns them into – yes jewelry, I know, but also – symbols for atheism. Science, symbolism, and ideology are getting lumped together in the discourse of the new atheism. In my view a highly problematic combination and potentially dangerous because of its ideological undertones. Wacky stuff.

Dutch scientists not enthusiastic about Dawkins’ criticism of religion

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Recently, Richard Dawkins visited the Dutch university of Groningen for a public lecture. It was a major event, where eventually students sold (originally free) tickets for quite some money on the black market. Anyway, science journalist René Fransen, who works for the Groningen Universiteitskrant as well as for the Nederlands Dagblad did not get the chance to interview Dawkins. Instead, he asked scientists working at Groningen University what their opinion was about Richard Dawkins. I expected them to be enthusiastic about Dawkins’ qualities as a science popularizer. What I did not so much expect was the outright criticism of the scientists when it comes to Dawkins’ crusade against religion. Quite interesting.

http://uk.webhosting.rug.nl/archief/jaargang41/17/14c.php

A child’s perspective on Dawkins’ “The Magic of Reality”

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A very interesting review in Chemical and Engineering News (of all places) of Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality. The review is a collaboration between a 46-year old father (a chemist) and his 7-year old son Max. Though the review is not completely devastating, the review does expose very nicely that Dawkins scolds at mythology where he shouldn’t and is sarcastic where he oughtn’t – and really that he really doesn’t know very well how and what children actually think…

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i2/Deciphering-Magic-Reality.html

Is the New Atheism movement dying?

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Recently, I came across a very interesting new perspective on the New Atheist movement – or rather, it’s a kind of eulogy written by R. Joseph Hoffmann, a “non-believing” scholar in religious studies (he’s a historian of religion).

In his blog entry, “Re-Made in America: Remembering the New Atheism (2006-2011)”, Hoffmann severely criticizes the New Atheists, and especially Richard Dawkins, for their fanatical rantings against religion.

Not only does Hoffmann (rightly in my view) point out the blatant ignorance of the new atheists concerning what religion is and does – they actually construct stereotypes that they sell as being “true” religion – but Hoffmann also argues that the New Atheist movement actually has had a damaging effect on the scholarly study of religion in the United States – and then I don’t mean theology, but religious studies.

Hoffmann writes:

The real success story of the new atheism is that it was bought and sold after being intellectually panned by almost all the cognoscenti who weren’t atheist activists.  In fact, as the circle closed around a tightly knit cadre of God-opposers, opposing God became virtually the sole criterion for what, in their parochial view, counted for anthropology, archaeology, sociology and the study of religion–about which all of the four (check the footnotes) were blissfully ignorant.

In other words, the New Atheists not only constructed a definition of religion, that is  false yet widely accepted (almost canonical) among atheist communities worldwide, but they also implicitly have redefined the mission of all the scholarly approaches of religion: to be scientific means to scoff at religion, to debunk it as being an illusion, not only silly but perhaps even a menace to society. The consequences of this, Hoffmann argues, are quite severe:

The willful ignorance of the new atheists matters because it makes almost impossible the work of serious religion scholars who have no commitment to belief, but who happen to feel that the study of religion belongs to and is inestimably important to the study of history and culture.

http://www.rjosephhoffmann.com/2012/01/01/re-made-in-america-remembering-the-new-atheism-2006-2011/

And do check out Hoffmann’s other blog entries, there’s much more interesting stuff there!

(Picture credits: http://www.theatheistmama.com/2006/05/is-atheism-a-religion.html.)